


The One(s) That Got Away

by fencesit



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Case Fic, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Mystery Mountain (Gravity Falls), POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27929284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fencesit/pseuds/fencesit
Summary: Darlene goes looking for someone to solve a new mystery on Mystery Mountain and finds she's not immune to the Pines family charm.
Relationships: Darlene/Stan Pines
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18
Collections: Heart Attack Exchange 2020





	The One(s) That Got Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertScribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/gifts).



After more than a hundred years, Darlene knows her mountain very well. 

The crooked pines: tall and straight at the bottom of the mountain, crooked and windswept at the top. 

The sky tram: slow and relaxing, brazenly a waste of time, but never late. 

The tourists: the same number go up as go back unless Darlene has reason to go on break. 

The employees: mind-their-own-business know-nothings, day dreamers, depression-fugue dissociators. 

The giant Paul Bunyan statue is still mid-repair halfway across the state, but otherwise the mountain is as it should be, the web complete. Everything should be fine. 

Except. 

Less people come back down the mountain than go up, lately, even though Darlene hasn't taken a snack break since that handsome guy in the felt hat escaped with his brood of children. She's been laying low, just in case, and it galls her to think that something has crept up onto the mountain hunting grounds in her stead. 

In the abstract, of course, Darlene doesn't mind the loss of a tourist here, a mechanic there. There are more humans in the world than Darlene could ever eat even if she lives to be two or three or four times the age she is now — there are more humans within _driving distance_ than she could ever herself eat, in fact. But Mystery Mountain is too large for Darlene to run it by herself. 

Or, rather, it's too big for any of the humans in the surrounding communities to _believe_ she'd be running it herself. Easier to play manager, and invent a hands-off owner, and every once in awhile switch up her face and her name to avoid the ugly necessity of false aging. But the thing about having selected all the people working on the mountain is that it's impossible to _never_ become attached. 

For thirty-odd years the man running Trambience showed up on time, kept his eyes on her face, and never asked any questions. Then one day he's not in his booth....and he's not there the next day either.... and then eventually Darlene has to _hire someone new_. It chafes, to teach a new man how to operate the ride and what to do if someone uses the emergency release. 

It bothers her, to catch her new sky tram operator looking down her shirt and think, _Can't eat him — he was the only qualified applicant_. 

How dare some nasty glutton out there do this to her! Where was the sense of neighborly duty! 

Then it gets even worse. There are other girls that run the ticket booth sometimes — girls bound to slink off to some coastal university and make something of themselves once they're out of the shadow of the Oregon sticks — hired because it's simply not realistic for Darlene to work 12-16 hour shifts, even though she requires less sleep than humans and could easily do so. They're exactly the kind of girls that Darlene would teach to morph if she could be sure they'd be able to twist themselves around the obvious ethical and moral hiccups inherent in being a man-eating spider, always pulling out their phones to share information about "callout posts" for nasty men on Tweetr. And now they're gone, just cars in the lot and miscellaneous items lingering in the break room to show that they'd ever been there. 

Darlene's not worried about the human authorities — it pays to be inside the jurisdiction of the sheriff that handles Gravity Falls — but this is _personal_. How dare something hunt on _her_ mountain and take _her_ employees? Darlene had invested time and training into them. Darlene cannot simply let this lie. 

* * *

Darlene finds nothing. 

She searches everywhere they should have gone as an employee. She searches the places they shouldn't have gone, but could have. In the dead of the night, Darlene even scuttles around the mountain in her true form, just in case the switch from more human senses to her natural spider senses will reveal something of note. On one particularly boring and unprofitable Wednesday morning, Darlene even repeats the search in daylight. 

Nothing. 

They're nowhere. 

There isn't even blood splatter or piles of bones, no tracks to follow, and no monster helpfully jumping out at her when she lingers alone and human-looking in the deeper parts of the forest. 

It's unsettling and Darlene doesn't like it. She has to staff the booth much more often now. She has to meet the people they should have met. Darlene has long been the weirdest, scariest thing on the mountain and now that she's got competition she's about ready to lose it. The only thing to do is call in reinforcements, but of course there's a problem with that: 

Who in the hell could Darlene get to help with this? 

Obviously not from local law enforcement and _definitely_ not from the feds. But Oregon is all kinds of weird, and Gravity Falls is nearby; someone had gotten rid of that giant, horrible magic bubble last summer and that meant there must be someone in Gravity Falls who could deal with strange occurrences without dying or drawing too much attention. Darlene has things to trade with such a person or thing: food stored away in carefully wrapped bundles in Mummy Town USA, local information long forgotten by everyone else, even a nice amount of human cash. 

Darlene considers a few potential avenues of research and discards them quickly.She doesn't want to _read newspapers_ or _learn to use the internet_ or _talk to strange humans_. It's a much better use of her energy to rearrange the ticket booth schedule and spend a few nights in the forests around Gravity Falls weaving webs until she catches what she needs: a gnome. 

He's bearded, about a foot tall, and he stinks of squirrel, caught in one of her trailing web traps. When he sees Darlene creeping down her web towards him he screams and screams — it's very rude — until she slips her human top half back on. 

"Oh, thank god, you can probably talk," he says. "Please don't eat me, I have so much to live for." 

Darlene hums thoughtfully and pretends like she's considering it. "You're hardly more than a snack, but I could be convinced." She leans closer to him, over him, her hair falling in a curtain straight down to the ground. She imagines he can probably see his own terrified face in the reflection of her sunglasses. "If your information is good enough, I'll let you go." 

"Oh," the gnome squeaks. "Well, I do love giving people information, definitely. Whaddyou wanna know?" 

Gnomes are notorious vectors for gossip. Anything Darlene says to this one will immediately be spread around to anyone who will listen, because the first thing the gnome will want to do after she lets him go is tell everyone how he just barely escaped from an arachnomorph with his life. 

"None of my plans near Gravity Falls are going right and I just _know_ it's a human thwarting me, but I haven't been able to catch them at it." Darlene shifts on her web, makes the both of them bob and bounce. "Tell me everything you know about humans who might be wrecking my stuff." 

"Oh, is that all?" the gnome says, laughing nervously. "Whew, I thought this would be a hard problem. You want the Pines, lady. Sometimes they bring other people with them, but it's _always_ the Pines family."  


"Now, don't play coy." She smiles at him, the good kind of human smile that always works on human men. "Tell me where I can _find_ the Pines, smartie." 

He smiles back at her, a little dazed despite still stinking of fear. "Oh, can't miss 'em. Go 'round this hill to the left, follow that little stream until a road crosses it, then turn right and eventually you'll see their cabin." 

It does occur to Darlene that she could just kill the gnome, of course, but then she'd make an enemy of his gnome hive, which is _such_ a bother. Gnome hives can get quite large, and she hears the one in Gravity Falls is massive. Besides which, gnomes taste terrible and have the _worst_ texture. 

Much easier to cut the gnome down and watch him scamper off before she continues on her way. 

The "log cabin" that the gnome mentioned is a _tourist trap_. Specifically, it's the Mystery Shack, which is essentially a smaller, poorer, less impressive knock off version of Mystery Mountain. The roof is mossy, the signs are rusted, and the parking lot is a muddy disaster. There's a dinky, sad little gift shop and in the back there's a porch with a moldering couch. People evidently actually _live_ in the building — Darlene doesn't know much about human dwellings, but she's pretty sure they're usually better than this. 

The most recent group of tourists crowds around the front of the building. They all talk excitedly about how _authentic_ the cabin feels and Darlene lurks as far back as she can, even switching her top half to human so that she can have the benefit of human eyesight. 

It wouldn't do to be seen in this form. The Pines that she's looking for would obviously have no choice but to take her seriously immediately, but these humans tangle with the supernatural _on purpose_ and with enough competence for that gnome to be able to give accurate directions to their dwelling. 

Darlene has to be careful. Darlene will watch first, before she approaches in her human guise. 

A man in a suit comes out of the front of the Mystery Shack and calls the crowd to attention. He's old, poorly shaven, wielding an 8-ball cane, and wearing a red felt hat. Even from a distance and unable to hear him speak, Darlene recognizes him instantly. 

She turns and leaves, sneaking off as the rest of the tour group moves into the house. She can't observe him from afar. 

* * *

The fact of the matter is, it's easy to seduce and kill men. Humans are stupid and susceptable to pheramones and no one has _ever_ escaped Darlene without being deliberately let go. No one except him. That Pines man. Stan. 

He'd had the worst jokes. The stupidest laugh. He'd been _gullible_ and _soft_ and he'd believed every lie Darlene had wound around him but he'd come prepared with a walkie talkie and he'd escaped. 

Worse, he'd dropped a giant boot on her! _And_ destroyed the ticket booth! _And_ caused a mandatory automatic shutdown of the sky tram, making the _Trambience_ experience last upwards of 8 hours for some guests that day! 

From everything she'd seen, Stan Pines was exactly the sort of man who should be comfortably situated in Mummy Town USA, and on her way back to Mystery Mountain Darlene thinks...yeah. Why not two birds with one stone? 

She'll go play the damsel. He'll be weak again. He'll be a big, strong man ready to rescue weak little her. And after he's solved her problem, helped her root out whatever it is that's moving in on her territory and taking her people, Darlene will web him up exactly like he deserves. 

It's perfect. Elegant. Foolproof. She can pin his disappearance on whatever he finds and kills for her, if the rest of his family comes looking. Or, really, the rest of the Pines are probably just as bad as he is, right? She'll eat them, too, maybe, if they're also horny creeps. 

Arranging to have someone else cover the ticket booth while she goes to ensnare Stan Pines would be easier if all the people who normally worked the booth weren't, well, inexplicably missing...but Darlene is in charge of everyone's schedules. If she wants to put their handyman on ticket-selling duty for the day, there's no one to actually question her. 

Then: transportation. The easiest thing to do would be to simply go over there in spider form, but that _always_ messes up her hair and might accidentally lead to her being suspicious in some way. Surely the Pines family would be on the look out for visitors who simply arrive from out of the forest at random. Instead, she considers the local tourist maps. There's a campsite site near the Giant Ball of Yarn and the Beaver Museum, and the local tour buses pick people up there all the time. It's easy enough to make her way there, fix herself up in the campsite bathroom, buy a ticket, and join in the tour. 

She does end up having to attend an absolutely _mind numbing_ tour of the Petting Zoo, where no animals will let her get close enough to pet and she has to laugh and say she must have put too much perfume on. Then, that's followed by an even worse round of miniature golf at Ye Royal Discount Putput: a family on the tour decides that she's just the _nicest_ young lady, isn't it a shame that she's traveling alone, and of course they'd love to include her in their game of minigolf. No, really, they insist. They _insist_. 

Humans can be so _pushy_. 

At last, though, they're pulling up to the Mystery Shack and stumbling off the bus into the dreary parking lot. The bus driver has to help Darlene down the last step, because big jumps like that are _hard_ on only two legs! — and then the crowd is gathering just like she'd seen the day before. 

Stan comes out. He doesn't notice her, only letting his eyes glance for a moment at each guest as he gives his introductory speech about the Mystery Shack, collects their admission tickets, and leads them into the house. 

It's a travesty inside, really. A lump of rock, skeletons glued together, bad taxidermy, and fake artifacts that were probably made with wood glue and newspaper. Some of the more technical equipment looks like it might have been useful about 30 years ago, but much of it is covered in dust. The whole tour is a sham, only saved by the way Stan plays the crowd and spins a yarn about this or that piece of literal garbage. 

The tourists absolutely eat it up, and Darlene plays along. 

"Ooooh wow, did you hunt it yourself?" she asks when they're looking at a horrible stuffed yeti that was clearly made out of a bear taxidermy and other pieces-parts. 

"You bet," Stan promises, and spins an impressive tale about a midnight hunt in the high Rocky Mountains. It has drama, tension, jokes. The tourists literally throw money at him, and Darlene supposes that explains how a place this shitty has stayed afloat: despite Stan's embarrassing game at Mystery Mountain last summer the man can spin a yarn so fast and so fine that even the cynics in the crowd are engaged and invested. More than half these people probably don't even _believe_ , but they're willing to part with their money just the same, for a good story. 

Despite herself, Darlene is almost... _impressed_. 

At the end of the tour they're firmly hustled into the overpriced gift shop, of course. The's a fat, cheerful man working the register while Stan peddles junk to the group all around the shop. This is where Darlene finally sidles up to Stan Pines, right when most of the tourists have made their selections and started to wander back towards the bus. 

"Hey there, Mr. Mystery," she says when the rest of the group has been appropriately distracted by cheap tschockies and expensive junk. She makes sure to soften her body language and her eyes, appearing for all the world to be an innocent, helpless lamb. 

Such a good liar might not be worth anything when it comes to figuring out what's happening on Mystery Mountain, but even just luring him back there to eat him before trying to find someone else to solve her problem would be fine. 

"Ah, haha, that's me," Stan Pines says. "On weekends, anyway. Hey there yourself. You have a good tour? Need help finding something? Can I interest you in a snow globe? A hat? No?" 

Darlene inches closer. "I was hoping for a more... _personal_ tour." 

"Oh, well. Individual tours are twenty bucks. No! Thirty!" He pauses and his eyes sweep over her. "Maybe twenty-five," he concedes, "just because I like you so much." He winks. 

She giggles. It's not even that forced, because she bets he gets all kinds of idiots to actually give him twenty-five dollars with that schtick, which Darlene finds genuinely, surprisingly delightful — if he'd just tried to politely swindle her last summer maybe she wouldn't have tried to eat him. 

But standing around listening to more entertaining lies isn't what Darlene is actually here for. "That's not the kinda personal I was talking about," Darlene purrs, keeping her voice low and inching in just a little closer, until she's standing well into his personal space and has to turn her head up and look through her lashes to make eye contact with him. He'll have a good view down her shirt from this angle, and a good whiff of the most subtle pheromones she can give off. In an enclosed space like this, she could get mobbed if she overdoes it. She brings her hands up to clutch lightly at his jacket, knowing the touch will help make her irresistible. 

" _Oh_ ," says Stan. His hands come up to cup her elbows — surprisingly chaste, most men go straight for her hips! — and he glances over his shoulder towards the back of the gift shop, hesitating. 

Darlene tips herself forward so that her weight is partially on her elbows and partially smushing her chest against his. "Please, handsome," she says, with big eyes and a little wibble to her lip. 

"How can I say no to that," Stan complains. "I'd have to be crazy, alright, c'mon." He leads her through the EMPLOYEES ONLY door in the back of the gift shop and into what Darlene first thinks might be an incredibly depressing staff room but then realizes is actually a living room. 

"I love your dinosaur skull," Darlene says as she presses Stan towards the armchair. "How come that's not on display?" 

"Gotta keep some things just for yourself, I guess," Stan says evasively. "Can I get you something? A drink or—?"  


It's easy to unbalance him _just right_ and send him careening into the chair, interrupting his attempts to slow her down. "I got everything I need right here," Darlene says, leaning over to start undoing Stan's bowtie. Soon, she'll drop into his lap — once she decides if she should sit across it or straddle him — and then he'll be _hers_ , to do with as she pleases. 

"That's _very_ flattering," Stan says, raising his own hands to his bowtie with clumsy fingers that seem to get in the way more than they help. 

"I could flatter you all night long," Darlene promises. 

"It's — it's 11 in the morning, actually," Stan points out. "Um, what did you say your name is, again?" 

"Who needs _names?_ " 

Stan's eyes are blown wide, his hands finally giving up the fight, and Darlene is _so close_ to the kill — surely she could hide his body as a mummy in the Mystery Shack's museum until she was able to come back and retrieve it in her true form? — but then there's and awful, loud racket from the next room over, thumping and creaking like a bad special effect. 

A boy in a pine tree hat is clattering down the rickety staircase in the foyer, and Darlene can't help but slink back a little with a feeling oddly like guilt. He's not as young as the kids she remembers from last summer, she thinks, but he could be the same one. Humans age strangely, it's hard to keep track of. Either way, she hadn't considered they might be interrupted. 

"Grunkle Stan, I don't think you used the right kind of nails on those steps," the boy says at the bottom of the stairs, clutching his chest and glancing back up at the staircase like it might leap up and try to murder him even though he's already dismounted. Then he looks at the living room, finally, catching the tail end of Darlene letting go of Stan's bowtie. "Oh, uh, hi?" the boy says, shuffling awkwardly. "Did he tie his bowtie too tight again?" 

"Haha, yep, definitely, that's what happened," Stan says. "I gotta stop doing that. What was that about the stairs? I'll check on them right now." He scooches out from the chair without touching Darlene, heading across the room with a false pep in his step. 

"Aw, Stanny, don't be like that," Darlene says a little hastily. 

"I never told you my name," says Stan. 

Shit. 

Darlene pouts at him. "The tour bus driver told us," she lies. 

"You seem kind of familiar," says the boy. 

Darlene forces a laugh. "I've just got a face like that," she assures the boy, and takes a small step back towards the gift shop. 

"Hang on a minute." Stan squints at her. "That laugh—" 

Darlene takes another step back. 

"Dipper, tell Ford to get out that big bug zapper." 

"Um," says the boy, "but he isn't—" 

Darlene very much does not like the sound of 'bug zapper'. "Now, don't be like _that_ ," Darlene begs, even as she continues slowly edging towards the door. "We just got off on the wrong foot!" She makes sure to add a little pathetic simper into her voice and widen her eyes, looking up at Stan through her lashes. Men like it when women look pathetic and sad. 

"Haha, yeah, that giant Paul Bunyan foot," Stan jokes. 

"Oh, from Mystery Mountain!" Dipper exclaims. 

She should have hit him with more pheromones, even though that would have felt like cheating — she hadn't needed them to get him alone last time. 

"Now you're just being _mean_ ," Darlene accuses. She lets her voice crack, like she's about to cry, although she of course lacks the tear ducts necessary to follow through on such a threat. They were long ago sacrificed to her morphing. 

"Aw, uh, hey," Stan says, holding his hands out to comfort her. "I'm sorry—" He does it strangely, the way a police officer might hold their hands up to placate a man with a gun. 

"Grunkle Stan, she tried to _eat you!_ " the boy hisses. He's grabbed the back of his uncle's suit, trying to keep the man from moving forward to his likely doom. 

" _Maybe_ I overreacted a little." Darlene takes in a big, shuddering breath and sniffs audibly. "But only because it's _hard_ to have men come around flirting with little old me all the time when I'm on shift!" 

Someone gasps from behind Darlene. " _Grunkle Stan_ ," a new voice says — young and female and absolutely appalled — "I can't _believe_ you!" 

"Aw, Mabel, sweetie," says Stan, turning his placating gesture on the girl who's just entered the room. 

"Don't 'sweetie' me, Grunkle Stan," says Mabel. She's got on a sweater made with the kind of colors usually reserved for warning predators that a tasty-looking snack is poisonous. She's also waving a baking spatula around like a sword. "Respect women! Respect service industry workers! Don't flirt with women who are working!" Each of these demands is punctuated by a jab of her spatula, and Stan meets each of them with a wince. 

Stan mutters, "I let you spend too much time with Wendy." 

"Wendy is _perfect_ and I'm right," Mabel informs him smartly, and turns to Darlene. Her whole face changes, from disappointed to friendly. "Come to the kitchen with me, Darlene! Tell Mabel all your problems, hug a pig, ignore Grunkle Stan until he apologizes!" 

Darlene finds herself dragged into the kitchen immediately, no room for Darlene to give any input, and soon she's settled at the table with a cup of coffee in front of her and a pig sitting in the chair next to her. 

It's a really cute pig, and it doesn't scurry away from her like the animals at the petting zoo had. Darlene reaches over and tentatively pats it on the head. 

The pig oinks happily. 

"That's Waddles," Mabel tells her. She's at the counter, holding a whisk now and doing unspeakable things to a bowl of eggs. "Pigs are a natural friend of spiders." 

...Darlene had assumed that Mabel didn't remember the whole arachnomorph aspect of their last meeting, but apparently she does. "Are they?" Darlene asks, while nervously listening for signs of a giant bug zapper. Or a giant newspaper. Or a giant cup. Any of those things would be bad. 

"Sure!" Mabel looks over her shoulder at Darlene. "Haven't you seen Charlotte's World Wide Web? Where she's a hacker and her pig friend needs help escaping so...?" 

"We don't have cable up on Mystery Mountain." 

"You can come over and watch it with me!" Mabel gives her a determined look. "It's a classic and it will make you really appreciate Waddles. Everyone should appreciate Waddles." 

Waddles squeals in agreement. 

"I appreciate Waddles already," Darlene promises. She's not really sure how to handle this kind of human social interaction but she _is_ sure that frequenting the home of a human who owns a giant bug zapper is a bad idea. 

The gnome had said that the Pines were the kind of human to indiscriminately mess with people like Darlene, and as annoying as gnomes are they're never wrong about that kind of thing. 

Mabel brightens. "Oh! Good!" She turns back to her bowl and beats them doubletime. "Okay, so, tell me about why you're here. Is it because you're in love with Grunkle Stan? You just haven't been able to stop thinking about him? He's your spider soulmate so, like, you've imprinted on him or something? No, wait, I think that last one is werewolves only." 

"Your uncle—"  


"Grunkle!" Mabel corrects. 

"-- _grunkle_ is certainly a very handsome man" — who's probably eavesdropping from the other room, so it doesn't hurt to lay it on a little thick — "but I'm actually here because I need help. Everyone said a problem like mine needs one of you Pines to fix it." 

"Oooh." Mabel sets her bowl and whisk down and whirls to look at Darlene. "We have a _local reputation!_ That's so _folksy_ , I love it. Who'd you hear about us from? Was it Multi-Bear? Grenda and Candy and I are going to smuggle him into a BABBA concert later this summer." 

Darlene doesn't know who Mutli-Bear is, but that's good music taste. "I asked the gnomes," she says. 

"Oh, _yuck_ ," Mabel says. "Girl, be careful with them! They tried to kidnap me and make me their queen. I mean..." Mabel gives Darlene a considering look. "You could probably just eat them? But still, bluhhh, gross, right?" 

"Men are all the same," Darlene says sympathetically. "Disgusting and greedy and selfish. I'm _always_ careful." 

"Aw," Mabel says. "Distrusting everyone doesn't seem like a very happy way to live, I mean, it must be bad for your love life, right?" 

Darlene doesn't think it would be appropriate to tell this girl she eats all the men she flirts with (and it certainly wouldn't help convince any of these humans to go fix her problem) so she takes a sip of her coffee instead. 

And immediately almost spits it out, because there's _stuff_ in it. Is it poisoned? Is this girl that sneaky and ruthless? Darlene peeks down at the coffee cup. There are a few plastic letters floating on top and some kind of dust. "Oh," Darlene says. "This...is different?" 

"It's Mabel Juice!" Mabel says. She lifts a large pitcher and sunlight streaking through the grimy kitchen windows lights it just right to show off a small galaxy of glitter whirling in the depth. And maybe some plastic dinosaurs? 

Stan abruptly pops his head into the kitchen. "We told you not to serve that to guests anymore. You know what happened last time. And who knows what it'd do to _her_." 

"That was _one time_ ," Mabel protests. "And Robbie's eyebrows grew back! Eventually!" 

"But at _what cost_ ," Stan says ominously. 

"S'cuz me," says Dipper, brushing past Stan and into the kitchen. He's produced a sealed can of Pitt Soda from somewhere and hands it to Darlene as he whisks away her coffee mug. He heads directly for the sink to dump the coffee out — plastic letters and everything. 

"Dipper!" Mabel gasps, lunging for him. A small scuffle breaks out between them, leaving Darlene and Stan to look at each other awkwardly. 

"Maybe I should go," Darlene says, thinking that if Stan's reappeared that means the bug zapper is probably up and running. 

At the same time, Stan says, "Look, I really _am_ sorry." 

They look at each other for a moment longer. 

Darlene tells him, "Men are never _really_ sorry." Not unless she _makes_ them sorry. 

"Well, I'm not saying it again." Stan crosses his arms. "So let's just move on. What do you want? I can tell you right now, we never cross promote with other tourist traps." 

Mystery Mountain would never need to cross promote with a dinky little place like this, but Darlene doesn't think saying that would make Stan Pines more likely to help her so she holds her tongue. "My employees are disappearing," she says. "You all seem like the kind of people who might care about that." 

Dipper — breaking free of the headlock Mabel's got him in — speaks up suddenly to ask, "Have you checked the mummy museum?" 

Mabel leans against Dipper and rolls her eyes. "She would notice if there were extra mummies, Dipper." 

"You don't _know_ that, they get new mummies daily! It's probably hard to keep up, even if she _is_ usually the only one adding to it." 

"I checked there," Darlene says. "I checked the whole mountain." 

"And are they uh—" Stan struggles for words. "—human?" 

Darlene shrugs. " _Well_ , you can't just come out and ask that in an interview! But probably." 

"Huh," Stan says. "Well, when Ford gets back I guess we can send him over with his complicated scanner thing..." 

"Aw, Grunkle Stan, we didn't really get to look around Mystery Mountain much last time we were there," Mabel says. 

"Yeah, we could just go and look around!" Dipper adds. "Grunkle Ford won't be back for _ages_." 

Stan hesitates. "Taking you kids to a place where people keep disappearing? I dunno..." 

"We're _technically_ teenagers now, not kids." 

"Yeah! And Darlene will be with us!" 

Dipper turns to look at Mabel. "Wait, Mabel, she tried to eat us—" 

Mabel talks right over him, relentless: "She came all this way to see you! And people need help!" 

Darlene would rather have this dealt with sooner rather than later (and ideally without involving anyone who owns a giant bug zapper) so she tilts her head and flutters her eyes at Stan. "I would _so_ appreciate having a big man like you double-check everywhere I've searched," she says. "Pleeeeeeease?" 

"Alright, alright," Stan grumbles. "Turn the oven off, Mabel. We'll leave a note for Ford just in case." 

* * *

Darlene finds herself in the passenger seat of Stan's huge boat of a car. Mabel and Dipper crawl into the back seat. The car smells weird, probably should be either cleaned or set on fire, and has a terrible turn radius made even worse by Stan's driving. But despite herself Darlene almost enjoys the ride, because most of it is spent listening to Stan rattle off a story about trying and failing to teach a bear to drive. 

The kids heckle him mercilessly. Apparently "everyone should know" that bears can't understand traffic lights or parallel parking. 

It's a Sunday, so the Mystery Mountain parking lot is nearly packed full. Stan pulls straight into a handicap spot without any hesitation, giving the impression. 

"Alright, kids, walkie talkies?" Stan asks. "Snacks? Map? Compass? Flashlight? Rope?" The kids confirm they have all of these things. "Grappling hook?" he asks Mabel. 

"Grappling hook!" Mabel shouts, pulling the grappling hook in question out of her pocket and thrusting it into the air. 

"Perfect," Stan says. "Now scram and go look for trouble and shout if you find any." 

The kids run off. Stan turns to Darlene. "Okay, now you show me all the employee behind the scenes stuff." 

"You don't want to bring the kids with you?" Darlene asks. 

He gives her a flat look. "They'll be safer running around together with the rest of the tourists." 

Huh. Darlene knows, of course, that humans are protective of their young (and when Stan Pines had been here last year he had certainly had a whole gaggle of children with him, for some reason) but she never would have pegged _this_ guy to be like that. She'd seen him giving the boy, Dipper, questionable advice about women, but she'd just assumed he liked to hear himself talk. 

Darlene wonders, suddenly, if she could reel this man in even though he knows what she is. 

Could she still do it? Would he be able to resist? She'd almost tricked him into helping her out from under the boot of the giant Paul Bunyan not moments after he'd finished running for his life from her true form. Given their interactions earlier, before they'd been interrupted by Dipper, Stan Pines still very much wants Darlene's human form. 

Surely it's possible. She'd given up earlier when he'd remembered their encounter last summer, but never the less he's come with her to Mystery Mountain and now they're basically alone together. 

Surely it would be an excellent test of her skills. 

"Aren't _you_ full of surprises," Darlene purrs. "Gonna offer me your arm, stud?" 

Stan sticks his arm out immediately. He's built up absolutely no defense against her feminine wiles, clearly, and Darlene takes it just like she had before, letting him feel like he's guiding her while she uses her body to subtly nudge him in the right direction. 

Normally this is the part where Darlene leads a man to somewhere nice and secluded where she can let all her legs hang out and wrap him up for a nice snack later, but in this case she aims for the staff room behind the Info Center. 

"Hey, wait a minute," Stan says a few moments later, just as they round the corner out of sight of the entrance. "You're not going to try and eat me again, right? 'Cause I apologized. And you'd disappoint the kids." He doesn't pull his arm away, which is kind of sweet. 

Darlene giggles. "Oh, I could never disappoint Mabel. You're safe with me, Stanny." Men like it when women laugh. And they like pet names. It's fool-proof. 

"Haha, boy." Stan uses his free hand to pull at his collar, like he's overheating. "Does that make this a date?" 

"Do you _want_ it to be a date?" Darlene asks. 

"My dates are usually less, uh, spontaneous," Stan hedges. "But if you—" 

"No, I understand, I'm just not good enough for you, huh?" Darlene pouts. "Human women only for Stan Pines, what a shame." 

"No, that's not what I meant!" Stan squawks. "You're very — I mean — I really think you — " 

Darlene laughs again and pats Stan's arm with her free hand. "I'm just joking, just joking, you're so _funny!_ " she reassures him. "I know you probably got a lotta girls, no extra room for lil' ol' Darlene. But you can't blame me from being unable to resist your broad shoulders and nice eyes, right?" 

"Uh, you think my eyes are nice?" Stan mumbles. 

Darlene doesn't, really, they're just normal human eyes — he only has _two!_ — but she's pleased to see that he bends to compliments so easily still, just like before. An easy mark, still, prey ripe for the taking except that moving too quickly last time had let him slip away. She should have seduced him a little longer. If he'd been naked, the walkie-talkie wouldn't have been a problem. If he'd been infatuated, he would have been happy to serve as her next meal. 

She's obviously got other uses for him for this visit to Mystery Mountain, but there's no harm in rethinking her old strategy and looking to the future. 

"The break room's through here," Darlene says, dragging Stan through the door in question while he's still pondering her compliment. "I didn't find anything, but a smartie-pants like you might." 

They search the room. Stan asks questions, some of them legitimately concerning the schedule and habits of the missing employees and others blatant attempts to pry into Mystery Mountain's business model. Darlene answers the former and feigns ignorance to the latter while struggling to ignore how sharp Stan looks when he's trying to weasel Mystery Mountain's advertising strategy out of him. 

She doesn't care for his eyes, his shoulder hair, or his terrible pick up lines, but maybe there's something to be said for his ruthless pursuit of profits. He even takes the change he finds between the break room couch cushions. 

When Stan finishes interrogating her and half-heartedly searching the break room, they exit the building and start a circuit of the mountain's backstage area, retracing the path Darlene has already taken, looking for clues. Stan even half-heartedly interviews a few employees, predictably with no results. 

As a rule, Darlene doesn't hire people who are curious or observant. 

They're about at the point of giving up when Stan's walkie-talkie crackles to life. "Stan, Mabel and I found something!" Dipper's voice calls. "Meet us by the bottom of the sky tram, hurry—" There's a thud and a crackle over the walkie-talkie, an unidentifiable clamor that includes an undignified yelp from Dipper. "—haha, I'm fine! Totally fine! See you then, bye!" The walkie-talkie goes silent. 

"Those kids are too damn good at this," Stan grumbles. 

He and Darlene extract themselves from the conversation they've been having with the souvenir shop cashiers about a recent upswing in shoplifting and head for Trambience's downhill station, but they don't make it all the way there — Dipper finds them instead, rounding the corner of the unfortunately-but-honestly-named Mystery Mountain Mystery Meats Shack at a sprint. He's a little dirty, slightly rumpled, and wearing a raincoat. 

"There you are!" Dipper exclaims. "Mabel's waiting, c'mon." 

He darts off. Stan gives Darlene a look she can't decipher and then follows him, around the corner. There's a fence next to the Mystery Mountain Meat Shack that extends all the way to the base of the sky tram station before turning up the hill, and Dipper leads them through a gate in the fence that Darlene had forgotten was there because for years it's been out of use and nearly completely papered over with various advertisements and notices. 

The gate leads into an area of Mystery Mountain that hasn't been used in nearly 50 years: the Oregon Gold Rush Experience. Back in the day it had featured daily cowboy shows, an overpriced saloon, a donkey ride around the mountain, and of course a great deal of futile panning for gold. A stream from further up the mountain was diverted to the area and run through a sluice through the center of the fake mining town, and Darlene had enjoyed pretending to be a tourist who'd found a real gold nugget while panning in the sluice. It had beat ticket sales, anyway, and thieves were just as good as flirty creeps when it came to keeping a stock of food around. 

In recent years, Darlene has only seen the gold rush area from above, while crawling on top of the Sky Tram line. The view was well-obscured by trees, and she'd barely given it a passing thought, although clearly she should have investigated the area. It's in disrepair now, of course, with rotting old log cabins and a sign that now reads _Th Oreg G Ex eri nc !_ where it hangs above the streetscape. Dipper runs under the sign and they have no choice but to follow. Uphill there's a newly-constructed waterwheel that had never been part of the area when it had been open as an attraction, and a mess of junk full of blinking lights attached to it. 

"Alright," Stan grunts when he sees it, as if some requirement has been fulfilled, and then he lunges forward and tackles Dipper to the ground, grappling in the dirt until the kid is pinned beneath him. "Where are they?" Stan demands, in a surprisingly threatening tone. 

It'd be a little attractive, if Darlene had any clue at all what was going on. 

Dipper wheezes out a nervous laugh. "I don't know what you mean," he says. His eyes dart around the street and finally land on Darlene. He nods. 

Darlene has a brief moment to wonder what that's supposed to be for and then — just as she's turning around to check — someone standing behind her dumps liquid all down her back. Darlene shrieks, jumping and twisting to look behind her as the liquid goes from rolling slowly down her back like syrup to flowing like water. 

Was it warmed quickly by her body heat? What _is_ it? It doesn't have a smell, it doesn't burn or itch, but everything around her has suddenly gone very, very strange. Behind her is a yellow-white-blue blur that produces hands that grab and lift her. 

It's a man, she realizes, moving too quickly for Darlene to track. He drags her down the street at a pace so quick that _everything_ blurs and Darlene loses track of where she is as she kicks and claws. She can't focus on him well enough to make him pay for manhandling her, unable do any damage even with her enhanced strength. 

Drag _this_ , Darlene thinks spitefully as she slips her bottom half out of its human skin, prepared to let lose enough silk to catch even the fastest-moving asshole — 

But she's let go before she can do anything, dropped onto a soft bed of damp hay before she even realizes her captor is gone. Darlene scrambles to stand for a moment, throwing hay everywhere, and only belatedly realizes that she recognizes where she is: the stables where the donkeys had been kept between trips up the mountain, thankfully long-clear of any animals. 

Not that Darlene is alone. Huddled against the dilapidated wooden half-walls of the stables, pressed back out of the way of flailing spider limbs, Darlene finds Stan's kids. Her missing employees, looking dazed and terrified, are in the next stall over. 

Dipper is missing his hat. Mabel looks delighted to see her. 

"What—" Darlene starts, but Mabel quickly raises a hand to stop her. 

"Timetraveljuice," Mabel says, the words smushed blurred together like a tape playing too fast. Then she repeats herself, slower but still strange: "Time. Traaavel. Juice." She points up. 

Darlene looks. There's a misting system set up above them, hung haphazardly from the rafter and blanketing the stables liberally. Darlene thinks about the liquid poured down her back — dampening the bottom of her hair, running down her shirt. No more than a cup or two, but it's clearly had an effect. 

Fuck. 

Moments later Stan is dumped into the stall with them by another blonde-white-blue blur, practically flung into the pile of hay below where Darlene is standing. 

"Chubbizee," Mabel says with a disappointed look after the blur. 

Darlene can't make heads or tails of what that means, so she ignores it and looks down at Stan. She'd kind of idly thought about what a pleasure it would be to have him underneath her, but definitely not like _this_. She leans down to peer at him. "Hey, handsome." 

"Heeeyyyyyyyyy," Stan says, squinting up at her. The word pulls and stretches, slow and clumsy and lasting _forever_ , much longer than a human like Stan should be able to speak without taking in another breath. The entire front of his suit is soaked too. If Darlene got a cup or two, he looks to have gotten an entire bucket. 

Stan goes to pull his glasses off to clean them of water and his movements are unbearably slow. Darlene looks away before he even gets the glasses off of his face. 

The donkey stables were always set up to face out towards the street because it was good advertising to let people see the donkeys. The little corral that had been constructed outside the stalls is gone now, leaving Darlene's view open to the Wild West-themed streetscape. She can see the machine hooked up to the waterwheel more clearly now: parts of the defunct donkey corral are probably integrated into the water wheel, which is forced to spin by water diverted from the old gold-panning sluice, and the ugly mess of machinery features several waterproof tarps draped across it to protect the electronics. 

This close, she can tell that most of the electronics are clocks, both analogue and digital, some of them spinning wildly. 

The stall is a cramped space to stand around in her partially-transformed state, so Darlene shifts back. Mabel and Dipper both react with screams, covering their faces with their hands and turning away — the trick of the eye that keeps the transformation from being graphic and grotesque instead of just disturbing doesn't work as well when Darlene is moving so much slower than they are, so Darlene tries not to feel hurt. Everyone is less attractive in slow motion. 

When she and Stan have settled on the other side of stall from Mabel and Dipper, attempts at communication start in earnest. First Stan tries to ask after Mabel and Dipper: "Did those jackasses hurt you?" Darlene thinks he's asking, but it's clear that the twins don't understand at all. Then the twins try to tell Stan what happened, but at times they're going too fast for even Darlene to understand, so Stan doesn't have a chance. 

"Tell me," Darlene says to Mabel and Dipper. She points at herself as she says it, then points at Stan: "I'll tell him." 

Mabel and Dipper have a small squabble, one that involves Dipper shooting several suspicious looks at Darlene over Mabel's shoulder, but they do eventually agree. 

"Dipper and I have stop watches," Mabel says. She holds up hers. It's bedazzled to within an inch of its life. "We noticed the sky tram was _really_ slow. Like..." She glances at Dipper. 

"People on the inside of the tram experience more time on the outside. Three and Four caught me, then tricked Mabel, then you." Dipper scowls, smoothing his bangs down. "They stole my hat!" 

" _Rude_ ," Mabel adds. 

Darlene turns and repeats this, slowly, to Stan, who nods. 

"Nerd shit," Stan says very, very slowly in reply as he squints unhappily at the machinery hooked up to the waterwheel. "Should have brought Ford." 

* * *

The back of Darlene's shirt slowly goes from drenched to damp to just a little more soggy than the rest of her, and the drier she gets the faster time moves until she and Mabel and Dipper are all at about the same speed. Stan continues to be much slower than them, and all of them keep being even slower than the world outside the cloud of artificial mist in the donkey stable — they watch the sun set and then rise, wrapped candy bars and cans of Pitt Soda tossed into their stall in what must be the dead of the night for the rest of Oregon. 

Darlene has watched their captors with close eyes all this time, tracking their movements back and forth across the street. There are two Dippers out there, the "Three" and "Four" that Dipper had mentioned, the result of some cloning experiment, and at least three of the tall blonde men, all of whom Mabel seems to know by name and recognize by sight even with them speeding around in blurred forms. 

Stan tries to escape, but he's moving so slowly he can't throw a punch. One of the blond men pushes Stan back into the stall with a long pole. 

When this is over, she's going to eat each and every one of their captors. Even the ones that look like Dipper. _Especially_ them, because the real Dipper keeps saying things like, "I can't _believe_ you didn't check the abandoned, empty part of your stupid scam mountain!" as if Darlene is supposed to keep an eye on every single defunct attraction on the mountain. 

"Okay," Mabel says eventually when the sun is inching towards noon again, "I have an idea. Dipper, you know how the grappling hook didn't work?" 

"We're lucky you didn't break anything," says Dipper. 

Mabel nods, rubbing her shoulder. "I'm not doing it again. But Darlene is stronger and has better reflexes!" 

"Oh," says Dipper. "Nope. No. Vetoed." 

"You can't veto me." Mabel crosses her arms. "You vetoed me once already this week." 

"But Mabel—" 

"You said we can't just stay here and we don't know if Grunkle Ford got our texts," Mabel says. "So shhhhh. Mabel is fixing!" 

* * *

They wait until the sun is high and the temperature has risen as high as it's probably going to get for the day. Then Mabel hands her grappling hook over, sheltered from the misters by her sweater, and Darlene — who's spent a long time slowly moving as close to the outside of the stall as she can — sticks it out of the shelter of the stables and fires. 

The hook, mostly dry, flings itself out at its usual rate, catches on a building across the street, and drags Darlene out of the stall. It feels fast, way faster than should be possible, but Darlene is free and soaring through the hot, open air above the heads of their captors, unfolding her eight legs as she goes so that when she lands on the wooden front of the fake store across the street she can use her claws to grip the building. 

She lets go of the grappling hook and basks in the hot sun as she watches the two Dippers below shout and order the blond men around. They slow down with every passing moment, and by the time one of the blond men has picked up a bucket of water and flung the water up at her in a big, dangerous arc Darlene is dry enough to flex her legs and spring out of the way, trailing sticky webbing as she goes. 

It's almost easy, from there, to string both sides of the street in silk until both of the Dippers and what turns out to be five blond men in well-worn jeans and a mixed bag of dirty white shirts are all stuck, helpless, caught in Darlene's web. 

"We'll see how _you_ like being trapped," Darlene coos to one of the false Dippers, creeping down over her webs. Elsewhere in the street her other captives are struggling without luck, each of them just as doomed as the others. 

Darlene loves this feeling. Loves feeling powerful, untouchable. Mabel and the real Dipper have managed to creep out of the donkey stable by now, and they edge carefully around the spider silk draped up and down the street, but Darlene knows she could capture them if she _wanted_ to. She could capture everyone on this mountain. She's invincible. 

Of course, this is when a bolt of lighting flings itself out of nowhere and hits her dead on. It's a terrifying feeling, her legs twitching and releasing their hold on her silk of their own accord. She's out before she hits the ground. 

* * *

Darlene wakes up in the dust of the Wild West street with 8 legs that ache and a head that feels like it's been stepped on by Paul Bunyan. She hurts in places she didn't know she _could_ hurt, and she's lost control of the top half of her human transformation, leaving her sprawled out on the ground in her natural form. 

Stan in standing in front of her, his back to her. "You can't just run around zapping people like that," he's saying to someone. 

"The note—" someone replies, their tone defensive. 

Stan scoffs, interrupting them. "You're always jumping to conclusions, Ford." 

"It was a reasonable conclusion to jump to," Ford mutters. "But look, she's awake! I'll apologize if you'll move out of the way, Stanley." 

Stan steps aside but doesn't go far. The man that approaches, Ford, looks nearly exactly like Stan, though they'd never be mistaken for each other. This is also, Darlene supposes, the same "Ford" that the Pines had mentioned having a giant bug zapper. 

She had been right to fear it. 

"My apologies for acting hastily," Ford Pines says. 

His coat moves as he walks forward, revealing that he has several possible weapons clipped to his belt. Darlene can't even guess which one is the bug zapper, but at least his hands are empty. 

"I guess it's understandable," Darlene allows. On any other day his assumption probably would have been correct, after all. 

In the background Mabel yells for Stan — "Dipper is trying to commit murder!" she exclaims, and Darlene can see her down the street wrestling a bucket of water away from her brother. 

Dipper has recovered his pine tree hat and gestures at the Dipper clone strung up nearby. "They're not real people!" 

"Hey!" yelps the fake Dipper. "Mabel, don't let him talk about us like that!" 

"These kids," Stan mutters to himself, and then sighs. "I really didn't need more of them to watch out for. You two—" He looks at Darlene and Ford. "—don't kill each other. I'll be right back." He stretches his back, cracking it audibly, and then goes to break Mabel and Dipper's fight up. 

Ford drops to the ground to sit next to Darlene. He pulls out a notebook with a gold hand on the front. "So!" he says brightly. "What's being an arachnomorph like?" He pauses. "Is that the right term? It's the one used in, ah, Mystery Mountain's literature..." 

With effort, Darlene drags the top half of her human skin back on so that she can lounge properly, propping her head up on her fist and arranging her other arm in a way she knows will appear to _accidentally_ accentuate her breasts. Her legs are still too numb to think about transforming, but maybe soon. "I wrote those pamphlets," Darlene says, "but you can call me anything you want." 

Ford coughs, and turns his eyes away from her to focus on his book. "Ah, I'm only asking in the name of scientific inquiry, you understand." 

"That's what they all say," Darlene purrs, even though literally no one has ever said anything like that to her before, ever. "You and Stan got a nerd-jock thing going on, huh?" 

"That's a reductive stereotype," Ford informs her. "Now, I've learned — finally — not to ask after a woman's age, but could you tell me how long do arachnomorphs usually live? Do you always live separately? Can you, and I apologize if this is a rude question, can you have your torso and head take your spider form and your legs keep their human shape or does it—" 

"Ford! Stop your interrogation and get over here!" Stan calls from next to the fake Dipper. 

Mabel is standing next to him holding out a piece of paper that she's rolled into a cylinder. "Like _this_ , Grunkle Stan," she's saying. "I mean, Dipper says they're made of paper!" 

"Oh, honestly." Ford climbs to his feet. "I hope I'll have a chance to interview you further some other time, Darlene," he says kindly, and makes his way over to Stan. 

Darlene lays there on the ground of the dilapidated Oregon Gold Rush area and watches the Pines bicker about what to do with the paper Dipper clones. Real Dipper has been outvoted on just being rid of them, so the debate has apparently moved on to transportation and containment. Mabel lobbies hard for just rolling them up and sticking them in the trunk of Stan's car; Ford inspects the paper clone with some kind of beeping light emitter to see if being rolled up will harm it. 

Strange that they care about harming it, when it's wearing their family member's face. 

Elsewhere on the street the other paper clone is struggling to free itself from Darlene's web, eyes glued to its fellow clone. Everything about its body language says that it will sprint for the other fake Dipper the moment it's free, even though that will obviously lead to it being recaptured. It should save itself, but it won't. 

And there, even farther back — Dipper had been sent off to see to the blond men. He cuts them free with a pocket knife and herds them uphill into the woods. They all linger on the edge there, crouching, until all five of them are assembled. Then they scamper off together, disappearing into the brush. 

The clone being fussed over by Stan, Ford, and Mabel only looks resigned, the fight gone out of it. Darlene kind of relates. 

* * *

Ford and Dipper stay to study the waterwheel and its attached machinery to try and understand exactly what it had been doing to the water, and how, and any potential side effects. Mabel stays to explore the Oregon Gold Rush experience in its "spooky, rotting glory". Darlene doesn't really care what they do as long as it doesn't involve burning the mountain to the ground, so she's content to leave them to it. 

She makes Stan carry her down the mountain to the staff break room. Along the way, she tells everyone who sees them that she twisted her ankle. She presses herself into Stan's arms, snuggles into him like girls do on TV sometimes, and calls him her hero even though _she'd_ really rescued _him_. 

It makes his arms tighten around her a little every time she says it, and Darlene finds that she kind of likes that. Stanley Pines has strong arms. 

In the break room, he sets her down on the worn, comfortable couch like she's made of glass, even though he must know that she's more sturdy than any human. When he moves away, she shoots an arm out and grabs a fistfull of his suit. "Stanny," she says with big, _big_ eyes and a wobbling lip. "I still can't walk, are you really gonna just leave me here alone?" 

"Ahh." Stan rubs the back of his head and looks down at her. He glances back over his shoulder and then his eyes are back on her again, lingering on her face. Then a little on how he can definitely see down her shirt in this position. Then back to her face. "I guess it's not like they need me since there's nothing left to punch," he says reluctantly. 

Darlene tugs him down onto the couch and he sits obediently, if stiffly. She plops her head in his lap and smiles up at him. They're alone, in a relatively secluded location, but Darlene is too tired to make _any_ kind of real move. Can't eat him, can't seduce him, nothing. 

She has to salvage this. Somehow. 

She says, "That was a pretty good first date, but next time let's leave the kids behind." 

"Oh, next time, yeah, definitely," Stan stutters. "Uh, don't take this the wrong way, but we're gonna go to like...public places. With other people. Right?" 

Darlene sighs. "Playing hard to get!" she whines. "But I guess you do owe me a dinner or two, huh." 

"...Do I?" 

"I was going to eat those dumb blondes, they all looked real snack-worthy," Darlene tells him. "But your kid let them go!" 

"Eugh, yuck, no, don't eat _them_. Mabel says they're a lab-grown boy band, and you don't want that catching in your teeth. Or uh." He makes a little gesture by his mouth with his hands, like the way her fangs move. 

Darlene waves a hand. "Doesn't matter, I'll never catch up with those himbos before they make it off the mountain. Not with herding behavior like that, they'll stick together and help each other if one of them gets caught in my web traps." She pouts at him. "So you owe me dinners. Five of them, stud." 

To her delight, Darlene can spot a little bit of an embarrassed flush making its way to Stan's ears. "Okay," he says dumbly. "You got it. Dinner." 

Hook, line, and sinker. Stan Pines will never get away from her now. 


End file.
